


Keeper Of The Lost Gays

by screamingatstars



Category: Keeper of the Lost Cities Series - Shannon Messenger
Genre: Addressing the incredible heteronormativity of this series, Analysis, Criticism, Essay format, Gen, I will do what Shannon Messenger won’t, Rant, Unlocked Spoilers, Yes I have written what basically amounts to an essay on this subject, and I am posting it for my own sanity, vent fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-22
Updated: 2020-11-22
Packaged: 2021-03-09 23:42:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,619
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27674203
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/screamingatstars/pseuds/screamingatstars
Summary: A rant-ish, vent-ish, essay-ish on the extreme amounts of heteronormativity in the KOTLC universe and why I’m fed up with it. Could be interpreted as an analysis if you squint.
Comments: 7
Kudos: 17





	Keeper Of The Lost Gays

Before I get into my long rant, I’d like to say that I am writing this as a queer person who has been reading these books for almost five years now. I’ve loved these books and characters for a long time, and I’m not at all trying to say that they’re completely terrible or that Shannon Messenger is a bad person. Please keep that in mind, and know that as much as I am going to call these books and their author out on their crap, I’m still as emotionally invested in them as any other fan.

I don’t think I need to explain exactly how heteronormative the KOTLC series is, but I’m going to do it anyway. I know for a fact that I am far from the first person to point these problems out, and this is not a new criticism, but I would still like to throw my hat into the ring and discuss it.

Firstly, the fact that as of the time of writing (shortly after the release of Unlocked), there are exactly zero confirmed queer characters in this world. Eight and a half books, most of which are extremely long, and yet every single character we know of is presumably straight. There is no implied queerness, no references to same-gender partners or exes, no crushes, no casual mentions of a different sexuality, nothing. And considering the amount of male/female crushes and one-off jokes and teases Shannon has put into these books, it makes this absence all the more glaringly obvious. At this point, I’m pretty sure every possible combination of male and female characters has had at least one line alluding to it in some way, including Linh and Wylie, who have a frankly very uncomfortable age difference between them that makes me question whether Shannon fully realizes what she’s doing by implying there might be something there. 

It’s almost like Shannon Messenger doesn’t see any male/male or female/female couples as an option. It’s almost like she’s purposefully writing everyone as straight, with the intention of showing the audience what they’re ‘supposed’ to see as shippable. Linh and Fitz? Go right ahead, he’s been shown in ambiguously-romantic awe of her multiple times! Dex and Biana? We’ve got your moments with blushes and awkwardness and implied crushes! Tam and Keefe? *cricket noises* hope you like extrapolating from their dynamic like you do with every other piece of media devoid of any LGBTQ+ representation!

My point is, it reads like she doesn’t consider the possibility that any of her characters might not be straight. Like we the readers are not supposed to think about how queer characters might fit into this world. Like queer people just… don’t exist in the Lost Cities.

Honestly, I don’t think they do. Because if they did, then it would be a HUGE PLOT POINT. One of the main overarching storylines in these books is the challenging of social norms and pointing out flaws in elven society. The Talentless, Pyrokinetics, the whole matchmaking system, humans, the way other intelligent species are treated… The bonus material in Unlocked and the novella both explicitly state that the Black Swan and the Neverseen are responding to the same social problems in different ways, so we have to look into these problems and try to find solutions. We’ve seen with Rex being Talentless and the discussion Keefe and Dex have in the novella about it that Shannon isn’t afraid to get real (and veeeeery real-world-allegorical) with some of these issues. She’s not afraid to stare them in the face and force us to think. And yet she completely ignores that the world she’s created is so horribly heteronormative that the only logical explanation for how it accommodates gay characters is… they don’t exist? Legitimately, I’ve tried to think of how gay or bi or any other orientation of character would fit into the matchmaking system, or the world in general, and none of the answers I’ve come up with make sense. To reform that system, you’d have to reform the entire society- which she  _ seems to be trying to do-  _ but it just doesn’t make any sense as it stands unless the only people who exist in the Lost Cities are heterosexual. 

I don’t know how much sense that last part made, but hopefully you see what I’m getting at: the society of the Lost Cities is obviously formatted with the assumption that everyone is het. And since it’s stated multiple times that elves don’t struggle with human discriminations, yet their whole society is heteronormative with an extreme emphasis on reproduction, the logical conclusion we get from this is that gay people don’t exist. If they existed, there would either be 1) a place for them in the matchmaking system (which would probably look VERY different, if it existed at all), 2) an acknowledgement in the books of how they’re disadvantaged within it (like bad matches and the Talentless), or 3) an explicit mention that they don’t fit in it at all. Since none of these are the case, and the 500 pages of bonus worldbuilding/infodumping in Unlocked don’t make a single reference to gay people in any way, I have to assume that the entire society is cishet, which is just *wonderful* to see /s.

If it seems like I’ve stated that queer people don’t exist in this society a lot, that’s intentional. I’m doing this to point out just how much of a problem this is. If you’ve created a system so heteronormative that you can’t fit gay people into it- heck, if you’ve created a world that doesn’t have a place for any kind of minority group to fit into the narrative (are there any neurodivergent people in this world, Shannon? Is being Talentless meant to be a metaphor for neurodivergency?)- then YOU SHOULD BE REWRITING YOUR SYSTEM OR ACKNOWLEDGING THE LIMITATION. I’m just so incredibly annoyed that she has the audacity to make these clearly allegorical societal injustices while claiming any others don’t exist, all the while conveniently ignoring the rainbow-colored elephant in the room. And as far as I know, she’s never once spoken up publicly on social media or in interviews about where queer people fit into the Lost Cities, either.

Okay, I think I’ve made that point clear, time to move on to another.

Except it’s not. Because I’m tired of authors, showrunners, directors, and everyone else being able to get away with ignoring us like this. The fact that Shannon can just… decide that she doesn’t have to acknowledge an entire community of people, and write a world where we functionally don’t exist, makes me want to throw her books and their “challenging societal norms” themes across the room. If she’s going to commit to looking into uncomfortable and real-world-allegorical issues, like she’s doing in Unlocked, then she can’t sit back and pretend she has no idea what she’s doing when it comes to gay characters. This kind of exclusion does genuinely hurt people, and I know the idea of fictional representation being important rubs a lot of people the wrong way, but it’s true. 

By the way, I feel like I should point out that a lot of the dialogue in the Talentless-Rex convo with Dex and Keefe fits extremely well with experiences of many queer and neurodivergent people. Frankly, I refuse to believe she’s so ignorant as to have missed that completely, so either she intended for one or both of those allegories to be there and figured that would be enough to make up for her ignoring the real thing, or she decided that addressing the actual issues of homophobia and ableism as they apply in the real world would be “too mature” for her target audience and so settled for a metaphor. Either way, I don’t buy it.

I don’t think that this is a case of the publisher limiting what she can do here, by the way, she’s written eight and a half best-selling books after all. The idea that after all the things she’s put into those eight and a half books, all the mentions of pregnancy and childbirth and death and serious injuries and torture, the publisher still won’t let her discuss gay people without risking a deal cancellation or some other penalty is ridiculous. More “mature” topics are already a thing in this world, so even if the publisher considered queerness inappropriate for middle-grade readers, Shannon probably has so much creative freedom on these things we don’t even know. There might be so much information on this topic I’m missing, though, so if anyone reading knows more about how her publishing process might work in relation to this issue then please feel free to comment and correct me. I’ll gladly admit that I’m not an expert, and that this entire paragraph might just be me theorizing with very little actual evidence other than my own attempt at reasoning.

Basically, Shannon Messenger likes to claim her books are about addressing societal issues, but she simultaneously refuses to address a massive one that really feels like it should have a place in her world. And considering that she’s from California, the excuse that she just “didn’t think about it” isn’t enough. She is making the intentional and conscious choice to exclude what could be a very complex and rich discussion from her books, as well as an entire group of people who already don’t see ourselves in enough media as it is. She’s doing herself, her story, and her readers an injustice with this one, and even though literally nothing is going to change that, at least ranting about it has given me some peace of mind. 

  
  



End file.
